Museum has Barnum-esque plans

Updated 12:05 am, Wednesday, March 6, 2013

Kathy Maher, executive director of the Barnum Museum in Bridgeport, is imagining a more immersive museum experience through the use of technology.

Kathy Maher, executive director of the Barnum Museum in Bridgeport, is imagining a more immersive museum experience through the use of technology.

Photo: Brian A. Pounds

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Kathy Maher, executive director of the Barnum Museum in Bridgeport, is imagining a more immersive museum experience through the use of technology.

Kathy Maher, executive director of the Barnum Museum in Bridgeport, is imagining a more immersive museum experience through the use of technology.

Photo: Brian A. Pounds

Image 3 of 4

Conservator Chris Augerson works on a Barnum dinner plate bearing the monogram "PTB" at the Barnum Museum in Bridgeport on Thursday, January 10, 2013.

Conservator Chris Augerson works on a Barnum dinner plate bearing the monogram "PTB" at the Barnum Museum in Bridgeport on Thursday, January 10, 2013.

Photo: Brian A. Pounds

Image 4 of 4

A portrait of Tom Thumb at the Barnum Museum in Bridgeport on Thursday, January 10, 2013.

A portrait of Tom Thumb at the Barnum Museum in Bridgeport on Thursday, January 10, 2013.

Photo: Brian A. Pounds

Museum has Barnum-esque plans

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BRIDGEPORT -- When P.T. Barnum built his famous mansions and museums, the great showman spared no expense to ensure a modern, over-the-top experience that would incite curiosity.

Kathleen Maher, curator and executive director of the Barnum Museum, hopes to replicate that excitement more than a century later when the museum eventually reopens -- albeit with a more reserved budget.

But, more than two years after a tornado damaged the building and collection, that reopening date is still several years away.

"When people say why is it taking so long, people have no idea how very specific our work is to do," Maher said.

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Tornado's tollThe Barnum Museum and many of its collection pieces received water damage after a June 2010 tornado. Here is a list of some of the damage:An 1870 biography of P.T. Barnum became encased in mold and couldn't be saved.Nearly 40 other documents were soaked, but were salvaged.The small dress form of Lavinia Warren also had water damage. The piece recently got to the top of the list for conservation at the International Textile Conservation Workshop in New York.The plaster bust of P.T. Barnum had an inexplicable nose fracture.Several of P.T. Barnum's paintings from the 1890s, including one of his wife, were damaged.The heating and ventilation system was damaged by the water, glass and debris sucked in and circulated after the tornado. The miniature circus located under the building's dome, which was shifted by the tornado, suffered water damage.Bricks on the historic building's facade bulged and others crumbled from the force of the natural disaster.

Officials here had no plans for a major overhaul when a fierce funnel of water and violent gusts of wind slammed into the building in June 2010, smashing its front windows and shifting the dome. Now the recovery is entwined with the planning of how to remove, store, renovate and conserve the 114-year-old historic building and 25,000 piece collection.

"It's not anything that any of us could have ever had any experience in," said George Estrada, a museum board member and vice president of facilities for the University of Bridgeport. "Mold, light, moisture are deadly combinations for artifacts that are hundreds of years old. Up to this point, as frustrating as it is, the priority is making sure we don't lose anything."

The rarity of a tornado striking a historic building and collection has drawn the interest of curators and historians throughout the world.

"We're being watched on a very global scale so we've got to live up to that," Maher said. "We have to serve (Barnum's) legacy that way."

The first year of the recovery process was spent removing the collection so repairs on the building could begin. The miniature circus, made up of nearly 4,000 pieces, took three months to dismantle, sort, track and store. "You can't just throw everything into a box and move it," Maher said. Everything had to be handled by professionals, many of whom donated their time.

Once the collections were removed, Bridgeport-based Viking Construction stabilized the dome. "It was just a very challenging job," said Anthony Gaglio, the company's president. "It involved squeezing very large men into very small holes. We couldn't remove or make any changes to the existing structure."

Because the building is on the National Register of Historic Places, the company was prohibited from removing windows or making holes in order to get materials inside the building. It took months to come up with a plan of action, which consisted of carrying materials up to the third floor by hand and laminating wooden beams together through a hole made in the ceiling.

While local foundations and state agencies have given more than $534,000 toward the effort, the cash-strapped museum had to seek grants as well to pay for much of the work.

Negotiations with insurance companies over the estimated $6 million in tornado damage are still taking place, Mayor Bill Finch said. The city-owned museum property is covered under the city's insurance policy, while damage to the collection is covered by a separate insurance policy paid for by the museum foundation. The latter has already shelled out over $500,000.

"The Barnum Museum is a city treasure and a regional asset," Finch said. "The successful, and swift, resolution to those negotiations will ultimately mean a full reopening of the museum."

Due to the need for extensive renovation and the amount of time it takes to store the collections, the museum decided early on to take the opportunity to modernize the exhibition space and repair pre-tornado structural problems. That work won't begin until Swanke Hayden Connell Architects, of New York, the firm hired in February 2011 to assess the extent of the damage and repairs to the building, turns in its final report.

The final project could cost as much as $17 million and take two or even three years to complete. Maher said the museum is looking at a combination of bonding, grants, historic tax credits and donations to pay for it all.

Maher said she expects the architectural firm's report sometime this spring. "Everything we're trying will be creative, innovative, cost-effective and sustainable," Maher said. "We're going to reclaim the 1800s in a sense."

Maher said she wants to create an interactive experience that transports visitors back in time from the moment they walk in, beginning with reopening the building's original kitty-corner doors. Barnum, who was recently inducted into the International Association of Amusement Parks and Attractions Hall of Fame alongside Walt Disney, wouldn't be happy with anything less, she said.

Other ideas include turning the gift shop into a replica of Barnum's Bethel store, making the miniature circus accessible from the People's United Bank gallery and reclaiming the third-floor room, where Thomas Edison once debated the viability of electricity, as a lecture hall.

Maher said she would love to bring in oversized furniture and items to help people understand how small Tom Thumb was and to show visitors a glimpse of Bridgeport over the years with a film projected on the windows of the Harral-Wheeler mansion room.

Even the basement would be renovated to create a cavernous tomb-like room where people could see X-ray scans of some of the artifacts, including the collection's Egyptian mummy.

Historic discoveries have been made during the recovery effort. It wasn't until experts began analyzing artifacts for damage that they realized that not only did Lavinia Warren's dress form hide two corsets underneath, but the museum's mummy is not a 2,500-year-old priest but a 4,000-year-old woman.

Then, when the architectural firm began peeking behind and ordered the removal of false walls put up in the 1980s, impressive architectural details, arched windows and a coppery tin roof underneath the white paint in the gift shop were unearthed.

"Enough of the original fabric remains that we can reclaim it," said Maher, who said she believes that everything happens for a reason.